Kim made the comments during his summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday at a border truce village, where he also expressed optimism about his anticipated meeting with Donald Trump, saying the USA president will learn he's "not a person" to fire missiles toward the United States, Moon's spokesman Yoon Young-chan said.

Seoul and Pyongyang have remained technically at war since the 1950s but Moon and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un agreed at a landmark summit last week to work towards a permanent treaty to replace a 65-year-old armistice agreement.

For the summit with Trump to happen, the USA says that North Korea must publicly and verifiably prove that it has given up its nuclear weapons. "We believe that Mr. Trump can take them back on the day of the US-North Korea summit or he can send an envoy to take them back to the US before the summit".

In a column entitled "A Real Path to Peace on the Korean Peninsula", the former professor of worldwide relations said it would be "difficult to justify" the US military presence in the southern part of the peninsula when the Korean War is formally ended with a peace treaty.

Again with a caveat about distance and angle, one of the lip-readers said that the two Korean leaders appear to have talked about the White House's suspicions about North Korea's willingness to scrap its nuclear weapons program.

The information cited in these reports comes from Choi Sung-ryong, an advocate who represents the group Family Assembly of those Abducted to North Korea, who has taken interest in these cases as the three USA citizens known to be detained in North Korea are Korean-Americans. "North Korea Releases U.S. Detainees, Bows to Another Trump Demand", the Washington Times printed.

Moon told Abe that he conveyed Japan's desire to normalize ties with North Korea after resolving issues of "past history". If he was willing to pull the U.S. Forces Korea out over such a small matter, he could very well put that option on the table when he meets with Kim for the sake of winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Last week, the USA president said the location for the meeting, the first time a sitting US president will meet with a North Korean leader, had been narrowed down to two or three locations. My intention was to go over and be a sports ambassador to North Korea so people understand how the people are in North Korea.

"Mike Pompeo is someone who I think has the close ear of the president", said Nile Gardiner of the conservative-leaning Washington-based research institution, The Heritage Foundation.

But a spectacular detente in recent months, with a summit approaching between Trump and Kim, and the prospect of denuclearization, have fed hopes of a historic turning point in the region. "And I had that thought".